The Unconference Honouring diverse stakeholders & expertise in - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Unconference

Honouring diverse stakeholders & expertise in interdisciplinary spaces

Dawn Bazely Department of Biology former director Inst. for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (2006-14) York University Toronto, Canada (it’s really big — 60,000 students, staff & faculty)

The Basic Challenge

• respecting diverse ways of knowing
• navigating the push & pull of claiming expertise both

within teams and the “stakeholders” that the team wants to involve in their study

• there will always be people/groups/experts claiming

primacy or expertise:

• “our method/view/way is the best”

Thank you, IAI and the University of Calgary, Faculty Education for funding & hosting this event. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the traditional territories of the Blackfoot and the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, which includes the Siksika, the Piikuni, the Kainai, the Tsuut’ina and the Stoney Nakoda First Nations, including Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First

• Nation1. The City of Calgary is also home to Métis

Nation of Alberta, Region III.

What are the benefits of transdisciplinary/ interdisciplinary collaboration?

• the Science of Team Science

community is doing quantitative research on whether all of this collaboration is generating novel, innovative, transdisciplinary results and solutions

• join their listserv —

SCITSLIST@list.nih.gov

• download 2015 book: https://

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/ NBK310387/

• I emailed Mariana a copy

Be aware of different kinds of interdisciplinary collaborations

• collaborations between science academics, NGOs and

government staff (multiple stakeholder groups) ≠

• collaborations between science academics and different

kinds of academics from the social sciences and humanities

• they are all “interdisciplinary” teams bringing different

work cultures to the table

Handling the challenges of science teamwork

The USA’s National Institutes of Health Ombudsman’s office has wonderful resources: The Field Guide is at: https://ccrod.cancer.gov/confluence/display/ NIHOMBUD/ Home;jsessionid=4C049B34FAE7265CE446 E6E88DAEC5F9 I emailed Mariana a copy

Clock wise from left: from pp 45, 5 & 1 of Bennett, Gadlin & Levine-Findlay (2010) Collaboration & Science: A Field Guide

• Personality type plays a key role in team

dynamics

• What’s your personality type?
• If you haven’t explored this, you should!
• If only to find out that only about 16% of

people actually think like a scientist (INTJ)!

• My results from an online personality test

http://www.engineeringchangelab.ca/en/home/

Engineering Change Lab by Engineers Canada & Engineers Without Borders

Agents Provocateurs

Change Lab aims to get past inertia generated when experts feel threatened

• and dig in their heels
• while there may be a grass-roots, and a top-down desire

for change, there is often a clay layer in the middle that stops the flow of information that results in culture change

Engineers Without Borders: Engineering Change Lab

Clay Nutrients from weathering rocks

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿

Grass Roots

“How will disenfranchised peoples adapt to climate change?” York University (2009) Symposium, led us to adopt the Unconference approach with stakeholders in future work https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/6351

The Unconference

because your list of stakeholders will always miss voices with a view & knowledge

–Rebecca Bagley, Forbes Magazine 2014 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccabagley/2014/08/18/how- unconferences-unleash-innovative-ideas/#2149ff22645b

“There are only two rules at an unconference, Kauffman says: 1. Nobody is giving a presentation – unconferences are all about conversations;

• 2. If a session doesn’t inspire attendees and they are

not contributing, they should get up and find a different one. (It’s called the Law of Two Feet.)”

We used Unconference techniques in doing this research I emailed Mariana a copy I emailed Mariana a copy

let’s try it now!

Here’s what happened:

• Crowdsourcing an agenda for discussion
• we did not add any new people — but, at the start of a project or in community

consultations, we make posters and flyers and widely advertise a broad, open discussion: eg “What are your concerns about Water?”

• we made a big circle of chairs & started crowdsourcing ideas for discussion
• we wrote down keywords from the title of the seminar (see photos)
• we asked the people present for other concepts to add to the list
• we spent 5 minutes in small group discussion to allow shy/quiet people to

contribute concepts that they might also want to put on the list

• we added those to the list (if a person was too shy to speak, then a small group

member would tell us their concept words)

Choosing 4 topics

• we chose one concept from each of the 4 lists
• we split into 4 groups and each group discussed the selected concepts:
• sustainability
• inclusion & globalization
• politics & conflicts
• livelihood & territory
• each group discussed the concept & reported back
• the discussions could then be used to inform future iterations of the

proposals or the professional development seminar

Where to go next

• the research team can gather all of the feedback and identify

areas that popped up for many people, as well as concerns that only a few people may have had

• this information has many benefits:
• confirm that researchers’ goals align with a diverse

community that they did not plan

• be used to tweak a Participatory Action Project (the

Unconference IS a way to do PAR)

• drive future iterations and plans for reporting back

Other ways to make an Unconference agenda

• post-it notes are commonly used
• everyone is given 4-6 notes
• people write on notes and put them under key concepts,

and the concepts with the most notes are used to form the agenda for the Unconference

• BUT, there is no right or wrong way to move forward
• invent your own

An inclusive & unexpected, unpredictable list of stakeholders

• there are many ways to use the conversations generated at an

unconference

• as you move forward with shaping future discussions, you can always circle

back to ideas and concepts that were on people’s minds

• I have always met unexpected people and ideas at the sustainability

unconferences that we organized

• we would decide on a broad theme and make posters inviting everyone to

discuss

• IMPORTANT we would provide snacks and drinks during the day
• in the Northwest Territories, we always provided lunch or dinner for the

community